One group of middle-school students in Humboldt State University’s Art Building learned Ukrainian egg painting, decorating eggs with dye and beeswax in lines, swirls and floral designs. Students down the hall worked on collage projects while upstairs, a group of intrepid young scientists learned about suction and air pressure in a project focused on Bernoulli’s principle, which states that as a liquid or gas flows, higher speed occurs simultaneously with lower pressure.

Science, art, math, language arts, music, geography and Spanish were all represented at the Gifted And Talented Education Academy, held Tuesday at HSU.

Coordinator Kim Blanc said the annual GATE Academy is a chance for gifted students from throughout Humboldt and Del Norte counties to get to know each other. It includes a guest speaker, an event for parents and dozens of workshops for students to choose from. It concludes with entertainment, often showcasing student performances.

Gifted and Talented Education coordinators from throughout the county meet monthly to plan the event, Blanc said. A total of 310 fourth- and fifth-graders and 338 sixth- through eighth-graders participated.

A group of teachers from the Eel River Valley Math Vertical Team gave a presentation to parents entitled “Math is all around us: Encourage, engage and challenge gifted students.”

The team includes elementary, middle and high school teachers as well as College of the Redwoods faculty. Cathy Clark, a teacher at Toddy Thomas School in the Rohnerville School District, said that in the past, high school teachers might be frustrated at the way middle school teachers prepared students. Getting representatives of all grades together helps them better understand each other, she said. The idea is that all teachers — from kindergarten through to CR — view students as their collective responsibility, she said.

The teachers talked about how to help students with their homework, something one parent said was difficult “being a parent of a gifted child, and not being a gifted parent.”

They said the parent’s job should be to facilitate and get students talking and thinking about the homework. This doesn’t require specific math skills so much as a willingness to “help them to be problem-solvers,” Clark said.

She said gifted students are often particularly impatient, being used to being able to do their work quickly and so getting frustrated when it’s more time-consuming. In math, what’s important isn’t just getting the answer but the process by which students get the answer, she said.